For over 10 years now, New Zealand general practitioners and other primary healthcare providers have been giving “green prescriptions” – written advice to patients to be physically active, as a way of improving their health. Research published in the British Medical Journal indicates that it works.
photo credit: Celso Flores
I’m all for this. Not only am I all for improving health by non-drug means, I’m very much in favour of encouraging health professionals to think about ways of doing so and communicate those to their patients or clients.
So here’s a further idea: the “blue prescription”.
Let’s say that your patient presents with elevated blood pressure, digestive problems, general malaise, sleeping difficulties or headaches, is nervous and jumpy, irritable or anxious, or gets ill a lot with colds and other minor infections. You have some tests run and there is nothing serious wrong with them, but they feel unwell and tired nearly all the time. They’re perhaps a person in their middle years with a growing family and an all-too-slowly-shrinking mortgage, who’s consistently working overtime, or who works on long-term projects with a lot of pressure, or who holds a job with a lot of responsibility which they feel is a bit beyond them. What do you do?
Well, some doctors will either tell them there’s nothing really wrong with them and send them home (that’ll be $45, thanks), or prescribe medication that they may or may not really need or benefit from – antidepressants, perhaps, sleeping pills, or the ever-popular Losec to reduce the acidity of their stomach.
I propose, instead, the “blue prescription”. Just as the “green prescription” is a written recommendation for exercise, the “blue prescription” is a written recommendation for deliberate relaxation, with a referral to a yoga class, meditation teacher or (best of all, in my of course unbiased opinion) hypnotherapist.
For those without the means or inclination to go to someone else, you could provide a small brochure like the bookmarks that I give my clients outlining Dr Herbert Benson’s “relaxation response” practice, or even a recording like my therapeutic relaxation track. (It’s free for download from the page just linked to, and you can use it as long as you acknowledge me as the source.)
So there’s the challenge: start prescribing relaxation. We need more of it.
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